Jeffy quickly unraveled the bubble wrap. The key to everything resembled a sleek smartphone, maybe five inches by less than three, but the stainless-steel casing featured neither buttons nor a charging port, nor any markings. The black screen wasn’t inset, but seemed to be an integral part of the case, as if the device had not been manufactured, but had been built one atom at a time by some 3-D printer more advanced than anything currently known.

The doorbell rang, the fist pounded, the trees thrashed, the chopper clattered, and Jeffy tucked the item under the shell of the Bendix. He took the guts of that radio off his workbench and stashed them away in a drawer.

Hurriedly, he tore the pasteboard box and its lid into small pieces. He dropped the debris and the string in the wastebasket and stirred the pieces up with the rest of the paper trash.

8

When Jeffy opened the door, three men loomed on the porch. The one at the front wore a black suit, white shirt, and black tie. He was as good-looking as any model in a GQ ad, his thick black hair slicked back like that of a film-noir character who reliably carried a switchblade and a coiled-wire garrote. His eyes were gray, his stare as sharp as a flensing knife.

The two men behind him wore black cargo pants, black Tshirts, and black jackets loose enough perhaps to conceal shoulder rigs and pistols. They looked as if they were born to be trouble. One of them spoke into a walkie-talkie, and the helo lifted away from the house and drifted somewhat to the south.

The guy in the suit might have thought he was smiling when he grimaced, but there was no friendliness in his voice. “John Falkirk, National Security Agency.” He presented an ID wallet with his photo.

Jeffy felt most comfortable pretending to be dumb and rattled by the uproar in this previously sleepy canyon. He spoke rapidly, running sentences together. “What’s wrong, what’s happening, do we have to evacuate?”

“This house is owned by a Jeffrey Coltrane,” said Falkirk. “Are you Mr. Coltrane?”

“Yes, sir, that’s right, that’s me,” Jeffy said, nodding in agreement with himself. “What’s going on, all the helicopters, are we safe? I have a young daughter here.”

Perhaps Falkirk thought that withholding reassurances from a befuddled citizen would inspire less guarded responses. Having put away his ID, the agent held up a smartphone on which he had summoned a photograph of Ed. “Do you know this man?”

“Who is he?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Jeffy squinted at the phone. “I’ve maybe seen him before.”

“Where?”

“I can’t say where.”

“You can’t say where?”

“No, sir. Maybe I’m wrong, never saw him. If I saw him, it was maybe just in town somewhere.”

Falkirk resorted to an intimidating silence again, as if he’d been conducting an inflection analysis of every syllable Jeffy spoke while observing the degree of dilation of his pupils, and now needed to match the two data streams for evidence of deception. There was something of the machine about Falkirk.

If the agent were less officious, Jeffy might have cooperated with him. However, he liked frumpy, delusional old Ed far more than he liked this man. Intuitively, he didn’t trust Falkirk any more than he would have trusted a guy with 666 tattooed on his forehead.

“He’s a vagrant and fugitive,” the agent said. “That’s all you need to know. He lives in a small inflatable tent in the wild part of this canyon.”

Jeffy crafted a frown. “Used to be nothing up canyon except coyotes and bobcats and the creatures they eat. It was better then.”

“We believe this man walks into town at least a few times a week. He’d pass right by here. Could that be where you saw him?”

“Maybe. I don’t spend much time on the porch. I’ve got a life.”

“If he saw you, he might’ve stopped by for a chat. He’s a sociable guy.”

Jeffy’s frown carved deeper into his face. “I’d never encourage one of those people. Like I said, I’ve got a young daughter to worry about.” He glanced at the two men who looked like SWAT team members who’d taken off their Kevlar vests to swing by the doughnut shop. He turned his attention to Falkirk again. “What’s going on here? How freaked out should I be? This vagrant kill someone?”

“His name’s Dr. Edwin Harkenbach. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not my doctor,” Jeffy said, shaking his head. “My doctor’s Ben Solerno. And my dentist is Jennifer Goshen. Thank God, I don’t need any specialists.”

After staring at him in silence for a moment, Falkirk put away the phone and produced an official-looking document. “Mr. Coltrane, do you understand it’s a felony to lie to an agent of the NSA?”

“Sure. I understand. Just like the FBI. Way it ought to be.”

“I am herewith serving a search warrant for these premises. This is a matter of national security. Failure to comply with a court order of this nature may result in your arrest.”

“You want to come in and look around?” Jeffy asked, accepting the warrant.

“That’s the general idea. Just so you understand—you aren’t the specific target of a criminal investigation.” His icy stare seemed to belie his assurances. “These are FISA warrants issued pursuant to an urgent threat involving an individual who might have taken advantage of your goodwill. We have warrants for all seven houses on Shadow Canyon Lane.”

“National security threat. Hey, far as I’m concerned, you don’t need a warrant for this house. It’s my civic duty, isn’t it? Come on in, gentlemen.”

When Falkirk and his associates stepped into the foyer, Amity appeared in sneakers, jeans, a T-shirt featuring her favorite anime character, and a light denim jacket with a yellow winking-face emoji on the breast pocket. Owleyed, she said, “Daddy, what’s happening?”

“These men are federal agents, sweetheart.”

“What’s a federal agent?”

She was playing dumb. He hoped she didn’t spread it on too thick. He doubted she would. “They’re like police officers, Amity. They’re looking for a bad man they think could be hiding here.”

“We’re not just searching for Harkenbach,” Falkirk corrected. “We’re looking as well for any indication that he has been here with or without your knowledge or is known to any person living on these premises.” He produced the smartphone and conjured Ed’s photograph for Amity. “Young lady, have you ever seen this man?”

She hugged herself and frowned. “He’s like some drooling sicko.”

“You know him?”

“Nope. But he looks like some guy who’d give you candy to go for a ride with him, and then you’d never come home again. I know all about those perverts. Daddy’s warned me about them like ten thousand times.”

Falkirk frowned at the photo as though he had never seen Edwin Harkenbach in that light, then put the phone away. “Mr. Coltrane, do you understand what a thorough search of the premises will entail?”

“Turn the place upside down, I suppose.”

“My men and I are wearing body cams. You need to accompany us room by room to assure yourself there is no theft or vandalism. If there’s any sensitive area you have an issue about, discuss it with us. We’ll see if we can compromise on the approach to it.”

Jeffy assumed that any area he mentioned would be searched with special attention.

Maybe the same thought occurred to Amity, and she meant to raise their suspicion in order ultimately to deflate it. “Hey, you aren’t gonna search Snowball’s cage, are you? You’ll scare him silly.”

9

While Amity held Snowball and reassured him, one of Falkirk’s two underlings took everything out of the five-by-three-foot cage: the gnawing blocks, the exercise wheel, the miniature ladder with the observation platform at the top, the little blue mouse house with white shutters and a roof of shingles painted like slices of cheese, the drifts of shredded newspapers in which the shy rodent liked to burrow and hide away. One agent soiled two fingers and realized what he had touched and said, “Hey, the little bastard shits in his own cage,” and Amity said, “Well, he’s a mouse.” Jeffy showed the intruder to the powder bath to wash his hands, whereafter the guy took the lid off the toilet tank to look for whatever, most likely for the key to everything.

As Jeffy expected, they searched the place top to bottom, turning everything upside down, or almost everything.

In the workroom, as two of his other men opened and closed drawers and cabinet doors, Falkirk looked around at the radios and at the collection of costume jewelry also made out of Bakelite, everything sitting on open shelves. His expression was not one of investigative interest, but rather that of an elitist of the ruling class who found himself in a humble thrift shop with inadequately deodorized plebian customers. “What’s all this stuff?”

“I polish the jewelry, fix broken clasps. I put new vacuum tubes in the radios. Sell it all to collectors.”

“Collectors? For kitsch like this? People actually buy it?”

Jeffy pointed to the discolored shell of the Bendix, under which the key to everything was hidden. “This potential jewel cost me sixty bucks at a swap meet. Cleaned and polished, it’ll look like that”—he pointed to a radio on which he had worked—“and then I’ll sell it for maybe six thousand at an antique show. And I’ve seen women fight over the best Bakelite necklaces.”

“You’re shitting me.”